I’m on a word kick lately, as you might have noticed. A week or so ago, Christine commented on my website that Shakespeare was a pro at making up words. Turns out that many common words today were first found in the Bard’s work. And by many, I mean 1700 words. (There is disagreement on whether…

In keeping with the theme of new vocabulary that started last week with words John Koenig had made up to describe emotions people have, I’ve come across some unusual words just for book lovers. Here are my two favorites from a list compiled by Oxford Dictionary: 1. hamartia Perhaps one of the most gut-wrenching moments…

Making up words is fun, but most of the ones I make up aren’t good words. They’re usually just weird noises while I’m trying to describe things to my children. Like “Hold the flusher down until the toilet glugurgles.” But, I’ve recently come across John Koenig who’s creating a multimedia Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. As…

I would like to say that I love all of you. After my comment in my last post about how I’ve lived near Glacier National Park for years and barely ever visited, I heard back from a lot of you that I’m not the only one. I think I need to instigate some sort of “Act…

We moved this week and I’m writing you from the chaos and beauty that is our new home. We’re in that in-between phase where we are in our new house, but not quite out of the old one. I can find all sorts of obscure things like extra shower curtains that I have no need…

You guys crack me up. I’m not the only one who was excited that the word Tsundoku exists. And y’all have a LOT of books in your To Read pile! I do too, but I’m an amateur compared to some of you. I’m humbled to be in your presence. The best find of the week…

Did you know… …that there’s a Japanese word for people with more books than they can read? tsundoku (n.) the act of leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piling it up together with other such unread books. If you combine that idea with a study from the UK discovered that on average, more…

Happy Thursday! Can we chat about something that is not at all book related? I had a dream the other night that I’ve had before, and I know I’m not the only one because my husband has had it too. It even turns out there’s a Psychology Today article about it. And hundreds of thousands…

Do you mark up your books? Do you underline great sentences? Write questions in the margins? Make your own commentary on the text? When I was younger I wouldn’t have dared. Books should be kept as pristine as possible. But then in high school I had a class where we had to highlight things in…

I was in a bookstore last week. That doesn’t sound like a particularly interesting fact until you know that before last week it had been about four months since I’d been in one. And maybe over a year before that. Granted, a big part of the problem is that I live in the mountains and…